Are Australian winemakers falling for the same trap as the Americans?

My West Coast wine writing mate Dan Berger has had it up to here with American cabernet. Most, he reckons, are over-ripe, over-oaked, underdone in the acid department and perfectly useless when it comes to cellaring. He reckons the ‘makeover’ to ‘virtual wine’ all began in 1997 and that most Americans who actually make the modern stuff don’t even drink it any more.

Dan, as usual, is dead right. He also knows as well as anyone who is largely responsible for this trend: the American wine critic Robert Parker. In my direct experience, only a few winemakers in the US are still prepared to make the sort of wine that the modern American cabernet drinker would probably now describe as quaint or old-fashioned. The wines I’m talking about have lower alcohols, less ultra-ripe fruit character, less oak and more acid, so they behave the way that reds have traditionally done: which is to develop steadily in the bottle over a period of time, acquiring more elegance and complexity as they do. Why don’t more modern winemakers take this risk? Because they value their jobs. For in the US, you see, low Parker ratings are not usually considered a wise career move.

But Dan hints at a further, and more alarming point from an Australian perspective: that Australian red wines are now perceived exactly the same way across the Pacific. All Australian red wines. This is something I began to fear several years back and have written about on a number of occasions. Sooner or later, I felt, the American buyers of the pumped-up and ultra-expensive Australian red wines deliberately contrived to please Parker’s palate would actually open their purchases and drink them. And all Hell would then break loose.

And this is precisely what has happened. As Dan reports, ultra-ripe and now ultra-affordable but once-super-premium Australian wines are now cluttering the American secondary market. And with the declining level of respect for them in the US, so goes Australia’s red wine reputation, which is now, as the Americans would put it, out in the doghouse.

While a number of Australians involved in wine production, not to mention a handful of American importers who seemed to know exactly what wines Parker would rate highly, were happy to take the big dollars from their cynically made Parkerised wine brands – most of which were not even sold on the Australian market – this outcome does lack justice. Sure, a group of Australian winemakers once played tight and dangerous with Parker. But as a segment of the wine industry’s overall production here, they remain a relatively small one.

Dan Berger, who regularly frequents Australian shores, where he restlessly seeks new styles and inspirations, knows as well as anyone that while there has been a steady increase in the overall alcoholic strength of Australian wines over the last three decades, an increasing number of Australian winemakers get nervy when their alcoholic strengths head northwards of 14.5. Today, in fact, there is almost a danger that the pendulum is swinging back so fast in the opposite direction that some winemakers are flirting with the raw tannins and vegetal flavours that designate fruit picked too early. Seeking firm, drying fruit tannins and a more savoury finish in their reds, many makers here are delivering raw, hard and extracted palates instead.

Despite that, there remains no shortage of fruit and oak bomb-like shiraz from regions like the McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley, where makers are happy to pretend they never make wine for Parker and his ilk until he rates them highly. I regularly taste wines around 15 and above which might actually be 16 or higher that would have been far better in all respects had they been made from fruit harvested earlier. I get no pleasure from marking them down, with the usual accompanying comments of ‘overcooked’, ‘dehydrated’, ‘dead grapes’, ‘raisined’, ‘physiologically stuffed’ or whatever. The amount of genuinely high-end shiraz made in this country would double overnight if their makers learned more about the essential component of wine quality: balance. Not to mention the stage where physiological ripeness transmogrifies to dead on arrival.

But, as I have suggested, it’s not as bad here as in the US. Especially with cabernet, which is now experiencing more love and attention than in recent years. It’s not often that you find an Australian cabernet of 15, although I do see many more at 14.5 than I consider a healthy thing. It’s a little unfair on makers and growers in the eastern states to condemn the excessive alcoholic strength of their cabernets in seasons from 2006 through to 2009 because they have been so darned difficult. Hopefully, if the 2010 season continues its sort of normal form, we might see more high-end cabernet than ever before with true balance and longevity. Other than the cool 2006 vintage, Western Australian growers of cabernet – who by and large are calling the shots these days – have had it all their own way in the climate department. This gives more than a clue to what makers in other regions would do if given the chance, and these are the Australian cabernets that would truly excite Dan and his ilk.

The real problem with cabernet and other red wines these days is that most people want everything at once. In other words, it’s a reflection of modern society, where people are quite prepared to put themselves in eternal credit card hock just to get the plasma screen and the double garage before they can afford them. Red wines must deliver flavour, complexity and approachability immediately they’re bottled, because that’s when most of them are drunk. While to some extent this is not necessarily bad news for makers of shiraz, pinot noir, grenache, tempranillo and sangiovese, it’s a kick in the teeth for cabernet. Make it soft, oaky and gluggable when young and it’s barely recognisable as real cabernet.

So in a way, Parker is possibly right. He’s the peoples’ prophet, the guy with his finger on the contemporary social pulse. He has often written favourably of the immediate satisfaction and gratification delivered by the young wines he rates most highly. The unfortunate collateral of this approach and its influence has been to shove much red wine made around the world straight up an evolutionary cul-de-sac. It’s a situation, though, that the wine industry is beginning to reverse out of. As far as Dan and I am concerned, it can’t happen quickly enough. Please login to post comment